Cognitive Aspects of Programming in Pictures

Programming in pictures is an approach supported by a special programming environment where pictures and moving pictures are systematically used for direct representation of features of computational algorithms and data structures. Within this approach some "data space" is traversed by a "front of computation" and necessary operations are performed during this traversal process. There are compound pictures to define algorithmic steps (called Algorithmic CyberFrames) and generic pictures to define the contents of compound pictures. Compound pictures are assembled into special series to represent some predefined algorithmic features. A number of the series is assembled into an Algorithmic Cyber-Film. The environment helps to follow a cognitive model where success of users' perception, comprehension and cognition depend on interaction with, at least, a few different but mutually supplementing features of a picture or a set of pictures. In this paper, we survey a number of techniques that are used with programming in pictures to enhance perception and cognition of people working on developing computational application models and corresponding algorithms.